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It’s probably no secret I love to travel, and at the risk of sounding like a crazy person, I need to travel. Though that’s neither here nor there. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, my traveling collection. It started 7 years ago when I bought two pencil sketches in London and Paris. One pencil print is a just one pencil print, but TWO pencil prints is a collection. Or at least, I decided it was so.

A couple of years later I got a pen drawing in New Orleans. Pens are adjacent to pencils so I let is slide into the collection. A few years after that I went to Switzerland for a month and thus began my somewhat desperate search for a pencil/pen drawing of some element of Switzerland. No dice. Though I did find a black and white fabric calendar. It’s great, I loved it instantly. The parameters of my collection opened up even more to allow in a black and white fabric calendar. (This weird tale is almost over, bear with me.) A few months ago I went to 5 countries in 11 days and only managed to find two black and white things for my collection. A watercolor of Amsterdam and a black and white decorative plate in Cologne. For weeks after I got home these sat on my bar cart, abandoned.

One day I finally got it together and framed the Amsterdam print. I also bought a plate hanger for the wall. Now, where to hang them? This is when I remembered I have no wall space left. I’m fresh out.

While this blog may have been dormant, I certainly have not been. I’ve done a few projects around my house and hopefully I’ll catch a second wind one of these days and write about them, but for now here’s a project I did outside of my house.

The company I work for recently moved to a new building and I now have my very own office. I have a door! And windows! And a super random fireplace! As you can imagine, getting my own office is a big deal, not just because I got my own office, but because I got to decorate it as well. Considering I have this blog, you can imagine how exciting it is for me to have a new space to decorate.

Here’s my office pre-makeover. Well, technically I did already have some influence on the space prior to these photos. The owner was repainting anyway so I was able to choose the paint color, it’s Sherwin Williams Gauntlet Gray. It’s a great dark gray (grey???).

Why yes that is a random fireplace in my office. This office was at one point an apartment so I got what, I can only assume, used to be the living room. Here she is post me getting my grimy hands on it:Anyone else weirdly obsessed with taking pano photos on iPhone? They are so weird and useless and also look sort of distorted, but I still take them because sometimes you just can’t get the whole scene in a frame.I love the free ‘Dress Your Tech’ wallpapers from Design Love Fest, I highly recommend checking them out.The desk and rug are World Market. The desk is probably too small for an office desk, but I couldn’t handle the idea of having a big boring (albeit super functional) desk. Of course, lots of cords because, you know, it’s a functioning workspace.The painting is from an auction and I’m obsessed with it. Soooo beautiful. It’s by a local artist and was painted in the ’30s. I got it for $50! Chairs are from the Container Store.

Two boxes of Pantone postcards from Amazon and a lot of tape and I got this super cool (and super affordable) wall art. For my birthday last year my two best friends got me this awesome Rifle Paper travel calendar. When I was trying to come up with something to put on the walls in my new office, this calendar came to mind. Frames are from Hobby Lobby and I spray painted them gold (naturally). One of my brothers said it looks like a travel agent’s office, but I’m okay with that. The long white bookshelves in the background are actually metal ones I found on craigslist (obviously). $30 for both of them! They were a total b to paint though. I tried spray painting them but that got out of control so I used a roller to paint and seal them. A total hassle, but overall a very affordable solution. Most of the stuff on them is stolen from my house. It was kinda fun to “shop” my house for things to bring to my office.

I’m sure I’ll continue to tweak it because that’s just what I do, but for now I love it.

Earlier this week I showed you my new bookcases. So great, right? I’m still in the unbelieving phase of having them. Whenever I turn the corner into the dining room I’m still surprised they are there.

It didn’t take me long to start adding stuff on the blank walls around the bookcases, I mean, this is me, if I see a blank wall I’m going to nail crap to it!

Before:

After:

You may recognize these bird prints with the frames that I gilded, as the ones from my bedroom.

I have a good reason for moving them out of my bedroom, but I’ll get to that in another post.

I only used four of the five prints because only four of them are vertically aligned. I also decided to level the top picture with the door frame and not the bookcase. That was a decision based on the fact that the postcard art is also level with the top of the doorway. I think it helps make the room look taller, but I don’t really have evidence to support that. You can kind of see what I’m talking about below.

I really like them there! It’s nice to move art around within the house because it helps me to see them with new eyes. It’s also nice because most people don’t come over and hang out in my bedroom so now these prints get more exposure.

As for the other blank areas…

I haven’t quite decided what if anything will go in these places, but of course, I’ll keep you updated!

When I was in high school my Dad went to the Ukraine and brought me back two sets of nesting dolls. I still love them to this day. Maybe you’ve noticed them?

So cute right? I managed to keep them alive and well for like 12 years and then came Bob. I shouldn’t be surprised by now, I mean in the two years that I’ve had Bob he’s eaten $300 eye glasses, caused $500 worth of damage to my laptop, and then there there is the priceless damage to my sanity. My nesting dolls probably didn’t cost much but I really like them, so when I came home the three mini ones chewed up on the floor I was upset.

Have I mentioned Bob sucks? That dog is going to be the end of me.

But dang it if he isn’t super cute.

Anyway, the three mini-dolls were on my campaign dresser in that spot for like six months and then one day, just one day, he decides to eat them. Trust me, he got an earful (but no physical damage, I swear).

*tear*

*sigh*

Moving on…

So I decided to make destruction into art because sometimes art is the only answer.

My original idea was to create a sort of mosaic with all the broken pieces, but like most art projects I changed my mind midway through.

I bought a shadow box picture frame on sale at Michael’s for $5.99. The background was black so I covered it in a scrap piece of white fabric I had. My plan was to then glue all the pieces of the broken nesting dolls onto the fabric but then I noticed that amid the destruction, four nesting dolls had survived (mostly) unscathed. Then I found a second unexpected thing.

Inside of each of each nesting doll there was a tiny piece of paper, two of which survived the Bob mauling. I’m completely aware that these are the tags that come with some products that say “made in China” or “inspected by Veronica”, but come on, they have a cool design! they are in a foreign language! written in pretty script! And let’s be honest, they had me at tiny paper.

And then I called it a day. I kept all the little pieces and maybe some day I will do my original idea, but I like that I was able to save and display some of the original dolls. Bonus: Bob cannot get to them!

Can you believe Instagram has only been around since 2010? I can’t remember life before it! (I wish I was joking about that) I have sort of a love/hate relationship with Instagram, but I keep coming back to it because those filters make everything looks so dang good!

This is by no means an original idea, but this weekend I Instagrammed my ‘fridge and I love it!

There are tons of places online to print Instagram photos but I chose Printstagram. They sell 24, 4″x4″ prints for $12, a great deal if you ask me!

I originally decided to print them because I wanted to give one away as a gift, but it turns out most place don’t just sell one or two you have to order many. So I went with it.

I laid out the photos on my table first so I could arrange them in an aesthetic order before I committed them to tape. It made me realize that I take a lot of photos of scenery and Bob and none of my friends. Next time.

I just used scotch tape to put them on the fridge so I’m not sure how long they will last, but I’ll keep you updated.

I think it would be really cool to continue to add to this collage until my whole ‘fridge is covered. I’ll have to really up my Instagramming to get to that point though!

This collage used up most of the photos, but one of the prints got the special treatment:

Me and my besties in Chicago last year. Our goal for that weekend was to have an awesome time and to take a photo of the three of us that we all liked (not an easy task for three women). We succeeded on both counts! The frame is from an online shop called Poppin. I only mention that because they sent me a handwritten thank you note after my purchase! Who does that??

My gallery walls are full of old pictures taken when I was in high school and college so I am happy to have a few updated photos around my house. It makes it look less like I’m obsessed with the past/living in a time warp.

Have you guys done anything with your Instagrams? I also love the mini-magnets you can get, they are adorable!